


We Are Pleased To Inform You

by nerddowell



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Bruce and Tony: science bros forever, Buckbeak puns full steam ahead, Gen, Loki king of innuendo, Loki/Thor if you squint - Freeform, Ms. Marvel teaches flight and broomstick handling because why not, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Peggy Carter is a badass, Sam just wants to fly man, Steve is an Asshole about Being Babied, Stucky pre-slash if you squint, Thor is constantly embarrassed by his brother I'm sorry, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, and Dr Erskine is the potions master, mother hen!Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-04-30 17:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5173604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve, Bucky and co.'s first year at Hogwarts, where Steve is a terrified Muggleborn with no idea what he's doing, Bucky is the chatterbox pureblood, Bruce and Tony bond over the science of a saltwater animal living in a lake in Scotland, Sam "just wants to fly, man!" and Natasha does a lot of eye-rolling. Featuring duels, detentions, Quidditch (and commentator Loki), Blast-Ended Skrewts, Marauders!Avengers and Buckbeak puns. So many Buckbeak puns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Train / Sorting

**Author's Note:**

> This fandom has, for me, a disappointing lack of Hogwarts AUs. I decided to rectify that, because apparently I am self-indulgent trash and I enjoy starting lots of things at once!
> 
> Anyhow, I hope you enjoy it because I'm fully looking forward to another six parts of this series. Yay!

King's Cross is freezing on the first of September, wind rushing through the open-ended platforms, staining Steve's thin cheeks pink with cold. He's clutching the trolley bearing his trunk and the hat box full of medications and snacks for the train with mittened hands, a scarf wrapped tightly around his neck and staring warily at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Beside him, his mother gently prods him forward - "it's alright, darling, and we don't want you to miss the train, do we?". She flicks the pompom on his bobble hat affectionately and beams at him; Steve's stomach is full of knots and the best he can muster in response is a weak, queasy smile, but he sets his jaw determinedly and pushes forward until the barrier swallows him and he bursts through - with a gasp like a drowning person breaking the water's surface - onto platform 9 3/4, ready to get onto the train and start his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Steve knew he'd be pegged as a Muggleborn the moment anyone looked at him. His near-constant expression of guarded eyes and a defensively-clenched jaw never failed to make him seem like an underdog looking for a fight. Indeed, the moment he got onto the train and three large boys several years older than him shoved past, knocking his shoulder into the wall, he yelled at them that "I'm walkin' here!", and received a derisive laugh in response. He grumbled under his breath as he struggled to lift his trunk onto the luggage rack, and had almost succeeded in balancing it on his shoulder when another boy of around his own age appeared out of a carriage with a bright smile on his face and hefted it easily into his own arms, sliding it on top of one labelled 'S. Wilson'.

"I was doin' fine on my own," Steve mumbled, put-out, and the boy laughed and nodded.

"I know, but you were strugglin'. And besides, the train's about to set off and you ain't got a carriage yet. Me and my friends are just down here, you can always join us-" and he grabbed Steve's hand and dragged him away. Steve, startled by this sudden show of friendship, only managed an awkward wave through the window of an empty compartment to his mother (who was laughing and waving goodbye herself) before the boy slid open a door and pulled him into a compartment where five other students were already variously lounging on the seats.

"Budge up, c'mon," the boy said, shoving at a dark-haired boy in a pair of round purple sunglasses ( _in September?_ Steve thought in disbelief) and a smirk Steve already didn't particularly like the look of on his face. The boy sat down and patted the cleared space next to him in an invitation for Steve to join them. He hesitated for several long moments before the train jerked under his feet with a loud whistle from the guard and he stumbled to land almost in the boy's lap. The dark-haired boy in the sunglasses laughed and popped his gum, and Steve blushed furiously and glowered.

"I'm Bucky," the boy who had helped him with his trunk told him, holding out a hand for him to shake. Steve took it gingerly, and had his arm almost shaken off with an enthusiastic smile. "What's your name?"

"Steve," he mumbled, rolling his shoulder. He was lucky Bucky hadn't dislocated it; weak joints and easily out-of-place limbs came part and parcel with the litany of other conditions and illnesses he suffered from. He looked around the compartment at his new companions, biting his lip nervously. The blond and the black kid with the copy of _Quidditch Through The Ages_ were arguing quietly about some foul or another that had apparently occured during a match between the Caerphilly Catapults and Holyhead Harpies; it meant nothing to Steve, but he was struggling to catch a lot of what they were saying, so he turned up his hearing aids as Bucky threw himself wholeheartedly into the discussion with narrowed eyes.

"Weasley was blatched! Llewellyn was deliberately trying to crash-"

"Why would she do that? Weasley wasn't even in the scoring area-"

"She had the Quaffle!"

Steve, completely nonplussed by this whole series of interjections, shot a look at the redhead disinterestedly flicking through _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2_. Her eyes flicked up to his over the top of the book and she grinned.

"Just nod and go along with it," she told him, her voice pleasantly gravelly, "it's not like they listen to each other in the first place."

"Never come between Wilson, Barton and Barnes and their Quidditch," the boy in the sunglasses told him, "people have been hexed over less."

Steve shuffled towards the corner of the seat bench, alarmed, and the redhead and the sunglasses boy both laughed. The girl put down her book and smiled at him, curiosity in her green eyes.

"I'm Natasha. Mr. Too Cool For School over there is Tony," she smirked at the boy in the sunglasses, who just shrugged in agreement with her and went back to fiddling with his wand and what looked like a small compass, "and these idiots are Clint, Sam and James."

"Bucky," Bucky corrected her with a whine, "you know I hate James."

"Bucky makes you sound like a Hippogriff," she told him in a deadpan voice, and went back to her book.

"It doesn't," he pouted, and turned to Sam and Clint. "Bucky doesn't make me sound like a Hippogriff, does it?"

"It kinda does," Clint grinned, and Sam laughed, displaying the small gap between his front teeth, and slapped him a high-five.

Bucky yelped in outrage and grabbed Clint in a headlock, scrubbing his knuckles over the blond boy's head; Steve leaned out of the way before Bucky could elbow him in the face, and Sam reached over to break it up, still laughing. He turned to Steve as Clint straightened his jacket and smirked at a still-scowling Bucky, and asked:

"So what house are you gonna be in, then?"

"House?"

"Yeah." Bucky's scowl was forgotten as he joined in the conversation, beaming all over his face. "Hogwarts has four houses, so there's Ravenclaw-"

"That's gonna be me," Tony interjected from the window. When Sam smirked and teased him with "Nerd," Tony lowered his glasses and retorted, "But still cooler than you, Wilson," to which Clint gasped exaggeratedly and Sam pretended like he'd been shot, flopping dramatically over Clint's lap and begging for 'some ice for that burn'. Bucky watched their antics with a wide smile before continuing.

"So there's Ravenclaw, Gryffindor - that's where I wanna go, most of my family's been in Gryffindor and we go way back - Hufflepuff and Slytherin. There's not much difference between the Houses now but Slytherin used to be the really bad one, back before the second Wizarding War - you know, Harry Potter and Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix-"

He wouldn't stop talking. Steve was overwhelmed, and he could only stutter monosyllabic responses to this flood of information with a vaguely frightened expression on his face. Wizarding Wars? Harry Potter? The Order of the Phoenix? He'd never heard of any of it, but now everyone in the carriage was joining in with the conversation like it was common knowledge to them, and he was feeling more and more left out by the minute.

"- I can't wait for Defense Against the Dark Arts, I've always wanted to be an Auror -"

"I just wanna fly, man, I can't wait for Quidditch."

"Me too."

"You have to get on the team first, Barton, and you'll have to stop eating all that pizza if you want to play Seeker-"

"What are you talking about?" Clint asked, slapping his (slightly pudgy) belly, "I have the physique of a Greek god."

Natasha snorted behind her book, and Sam and Bucky were laughing outright. Even Steve managed to crack a smile, and Bucky turned to him, beaming.

"It's no big deal whatever house you're sorted into. We're all going to be in different houses anyway and nobody really knows until they get there which one they're going to get into - well, except Nat, because she's second year so she's already in Slytherin. And we'll all have lessons together so we can still hang out and stuff and it'll be fun, right?"

Steve, for whom six years at primary school where he kept making the toilets explode whenever bullies tried to flush his head down them without even meaning to, wouldn't ever have said school was particularly fun; but Bucky, with his infectious good humour and brilliant smile, had him pretty much convinced.

The rest of the train ride passed in companionable chatter, punctuated with visits from other students in other houses. The first was a pretty blonde girl in Natasha's year who came to invite Natasha to the Ravenclaw carriage; she smiled at all of them and introduced herself as Virginia, and Tony in the corner straightened visibly, his cheeks pinkening behind his sunglasses. Clint, catching his blush, smirked and teased him about it for a good half hour before Tony threatened to jinx him with the worst thing he could think of, and threw his little compass at him. It made a loud squeaking noise as it hit Clint square in the forehead, and then a very clipped Mayfair accent came out of nowhere and told Tony that "I didn't much appreciate being thrown around, Anthony, and really, is that any way to treat your friends?" and Tony apologised to it with a chastened expression and a muttered "Sorry, Jarvis."

The next interruption came in the form of a very loud, very tall, broad-shouldered blond boy with hair down to his shoulders, dragging a  much skinnier and grumpier-looking brunette behind him. He introduced himself (in a voice nothing short of a bellow, making Steve wince and Bucky whisper that with the boy's size and that voice he has to be part giant) as Thor, and the sallow brunette currently glaring holes in the back of his head as Loki. Thor was, he said, a Gryffindor prefect, and also the Quidditch team Captain. This revelation led to a barrage of questions from Sam and Clint, wanting to know what position he played and how many games he'd won and whether he was planning to go into Quidditch when he left Hogwarts. Thor was a Beater (whatever that was) who had won eighty percent of his games last year and was planning to join the Norwegian national team when he left school; Loki had snickered at the former and outright laughed at the latter, and reminded Thor that "we're not even Norwegian nationals any more, Thor, we're practically English now."

"Shut up," Thor retorted, grumpy, and Loki smirked.

"What house are you in, Loki?" Steve asked, and Loki flicked his unsettling cool green gaze over to him before answering in a bored voice, "Slytherin. Fourth year. This blithering idiot," he gestured to Thor with a disdainful expression, "is fifth year Gryffindor, and for some reason the Headmistress momentarily took leave of her senses and made him a prefect as well as the house team Captain. His head was so big over summer that he could hardly fit it through the door. I'm amazed he manages to actually fly on that broomstick without it weighing him down."

Thor elbowed him roughly and shot them all an apologetic smile. "Loki is angry and bitter, like his coffee, which incidentally he has not yet had today. I apologise for his mood and will remove him for caffeination purposes, to be returned when he can keep a civil tongue in his mouth."

"I've kept your civil tongue in my-"

"MOVING ON, LOKI! Goodbye everyone, nice to meet you!" Thor shouted abruptly and towed Loki away, to the sound of Clint and Sam's snickers of amusement and Steve's confused perturbation. He turned to Natasha.

"Did Loki say-"

"Oh, yeah. He and Thor have been like that for ages. They were raised together in the royal palace in Norway, they're kind of a big deal in their country, but they're not actually related according to Loki. Made the whole pining for each other thing last year a lot less awkward when everyone realised."

"Huh," Steve said, watching them go for a long few moments before turning to Bucky and trying to get him to tell him more about the Hogwarts houses.  
  


* * *

 

If Bucky thought Thor had been half-giant, there was no preparing them for the sight of Hagrid, who loomed three feet taller than even fifteen-year-old Thor, with hands big enough to pick Steve up in one fist and set him atop his shoulders, which were easily as wide as the compartment benches in the train carriages. Bucky had whistled at the sight of him, grey eyes round and getting rounder by the second; he turned to Steve and whispered, "Fuckin' hell!" and stepped warily down onto the platform to follow the loud, heavily-accented shouts of "Firs' years! Firs' years t'me, firs' years over here!"

Hagrid led them away from the train station to a fleet of little boats, floating serenely on the surface of a large lake. Steve's gut clenched; he'd never been a fan of being on or in water, after falling out of a boat when he was seven and almost drowning before his mother had pulled him out by the leg of his trousers. It had been an unpleasant incident where the brackish water had inflamed his lungs, aggravating his asthma and leading to a bout of pneumonia that had taken almost a month to fight off. He didn't think that Hagrid would let the same thing happen again (at least, he hoped not), but he was nevertheless extremely nervous about stepping off the pier onto his own boat.

Bucky, on the other hand, took to it like a duck to water, happily clambering into their boat and waving Steve in to sit beside him. Steve hesitated still, painfully aware of holding other students up, until Tony groaned and gave him a light push and in he tumbled, right into Bucky's outstretched arms.

"There," he beamed at him, "wasn't so bad, was it?" He fixed his eyes on Tony and glared. "Stark, don't be a dick. Don't go pushin' people when they ain't ready."

Hagrid, from his boat at the front of the fleet, turned to Tony. "You there. You come on down here where I can keep an eye on yeh." He motioned to his boat, and Tony sighed before stepping over from boat to boat to join the front, sat in the boat directly beside Hagrid's with Clint, Sam and a studious, dark-haired boy with wire-rimmed glasses. Bucky snorted and settled back on the bench beside Steve, looking around in wonder. The castle, turreted and gothic, rose up from the mountains by the lake to stand silhouetted against the moon, with lit windows like stars. Hagrid tapped his boat with a pink umbrella he kept clutched in one huge fist, and they set sail smoothly across the lake.

"Mind ou' fer the squid."

"The what?" Steve heard one of the girls shriek. The boy in the glasses beside Tony spoke up to answer her, smiling serenely as he gazed down at the water and trailed his fingers in the wake of the boat.

"There's a giant squid in the lake. It's been here for years. It's fascinating really because real giant squids - true giant squids, that is to say - can't live in fresh water like lakes because there's too much sunlight and not enough space, and the water pressure would be all wrong. Not to mention that as it's fresh water, there's no salt, so the squid's hypertonic cells would become hypotonic from lack of salt. Its body salt would just leak out into the water through osmosis, and the cells would fill up with too much water and would explode-"

"So the squid would _explode_?" Clint asked excitedly.

"No, not really. But it would die. But obviously it's not a true giant squid because it's still alive, and - oh, look, it's waving!"

The squid had indeed popped up above the water to flail one enormous tentacle at them in a wave; several of the students screamed and tried to hide themselves within the boats. Bucky, unsurprisingly, waved back enthusiastically and laughed.  
"Wait 'til I tell Becca I got a wave from the giant squid!"

Meanwhile, Tony was shaking the boy in the glasses' hand and introducing himself; it turned out Bruce - that was the boy's name - already knew Tony by reputation, as most of the other students seemed to, and was very excited himself to meet the son of the wizarding world's premier inventor. Bruce was a Muggleborn whose parents were scientists, he explained, and his father worked predominantly with deep-sea marine animals, which was how he knew all about squids. Tony was picking his brains further, amazed by the descriptions of the machines and equipment Muggles used for their 'science', when the boats glided to a halt at another long pier on the other side of the lake, underneath the castle. Bucky helped Steve out of the boat this time and shrugged his shoulders, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"S'time," he said excitedly, "s'time to find out what house we're gonna be in. I hope it's Gryffindor - my dad was a Gryffindor, and his dad, and his dad - Mum was a Ravenclaw, was a real surprise when I was little 'cause she's a - well, 'cause she's not real good at magic sometimes, but-" and he chattered on as they made their way up to the castle and Steve tried to fight back the vague nauseous feeling in his stomach.

What if he didn't get sorted? What if his letter was a prank, and he gets all the way to the sorting and they suddenly realise he shouldn't be here and has to go home? What would he do? He'd have to get back on the train and go all the way back home, turn up at King's Cross with his trunk and his robes, to his mother's disappointment and panic as she tried to re-enrol him at secondary school with only a week before they started term at that tiny comprehensive. He bit his lip. He wasn't magical at all - not like Bucky, who from his stories seemed to have grown up with a wand in his hand (he'd told Steve about accidentally shrinking the cat when he was three and found his father's wand lying around, and his mother had stepped on it by mistake and Bucky had cried for hours), or even Sam, who was 'half-blood' and had watched his father use a wand behind his mother's back for years before he passed away.

His anxiety only grew as they approached the great hall and were met by a woman in dark green robes, her expression stern. She looked them over from beneath the brim of her hat before Hagrid spoke up.

"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall."

"Thank you, Hagrid." She glanced around them again before looking back to him. "I will take them from here."

Hagrid nodded and made himself scarce; Bucky edged a little closer to Steve, the first sign of nerves Steve had seen from him at all that night, which made him feel a little better. He tried his best to give Bucky a reassuring smile, and Bucky smiled back, reaching for Steve's hand and squeezing gently.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," Professor McGonagall said. "Now, in a few moments, you will pass through these doors and join your classmates. But before you can take your seats, you must be sorted into your houses. They are Gryffindor -" Bucky glanced at Steve, showing him his crossed fingers, "Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. While you are here, your house will be like your family. Your triumphs will earn you house points. Any rule breaking, and you will lose house points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points wins the house cup."

She nodded and waved her hand, the doors slowly opening to reveal a cavernous hall with candles floating above the long tables, students seated on the benches around them, next to translucent, smoky figures that Bucky excitedly recognised as "The ghosts!". At the head of the hall was another long set of tables where the teachers sat, and in the middle of the aisle between the two was a stool with an old, ragged hat sat on top of it. Steve frowned curiously.

Professor McGonagall lead them inside the hall, to many gasps from the students around Steve as they looked up to see the ceiling, which was ink black with glittering stars sparkling across it, familiar constellations glinting in between passing clouds as though the hall had no roof at all and simply opened out into the air above them. Steve was so entranced by it that he didn't realise they'd come to a stop until he banged into Clint's back, who turned round and grinned at him, giving him a thumbs-up. The noise of chattering students with the acoustics of the hall was deafening in Steve's ears, and he reached up to adjust his hearing aids until it fell to a bearable level. When he glanced sideways, Bucky was watching him curiously and he flushed bright red, scowling. Of course. He'd always be a curiosity, even here when he was the one completely unfamiliar with all of this magic stuff.

Directing them to stand in line (Steve quickly ducked behind Bucky), Professor McGonagall called them forward to sit on the stool and place the hat on their heads to be sorted. Steve watched curiously as the first few were called - Bruce Banner, Tony's friend, was placed in Ravenclaw, and Clint was sorted into Hufflepuff, along with Sam; Tony was another Ravenclaw, and he slapped Bruce on the back as he took his seat beside him, immediately engaging him again in conversation before being shushed by Virginia, Natasha's friend from the train.

Bucky's name was called a moment later, and he stepped up shakily to sit on the stool as Professor McGonagall passed him the hat. It sat there for several moments as Bucky scrunched his face up and crossed his fingers. Probably wishing for Gryffindor again, Steve thought, and crossed his own fingers in a show of solidarity - but the hat pronounced Bucky a Hufflepuff, and Sam and Clint were cheering and waving him over enthusiastically as Bucky shrugged an apology at Thor and smiled encouragingly at Steve.

Steve watched several more classmates be sorted, two Peters - Quill and Parker - both becoming Gryffindors, to Thor's visible delight  - before his own name was called and he advanced towards the stool on shaky legs, painfully aware of the pathetic figure he cut now that everyone was staring at him. It took him a moment to sit comfortably on the stool, used to having an upright-backed chair to support and counteract his scoliosis, and he gave a jerk as the hat suddenly spoke, right in his ear, as if through the top of his head.

"You're another difficult one. Brave, very brave - a particular type of courage, I see, and you'd do well in Gryffindor, very well indeed. There dwell the brave at heart, after all, as I said years ago... But this thirst to prove yourself, my, my, well, there's only one place that can go."

"Not Gryffindor," Steve thought as loudly as he dared, terrified the hat would broadcast this to the hall and Thor would think he thought himself too good for his house. The hat chuckled.

"No?"

"It wouldn't be fair. Bucky's so brave, and he - he wanted to be in Gryffindor. I'm nothing like him, it wouldn't be fair to him to put me there and not him."

"If you're sure," the hat replied, and a moment later it was calling, "SLYTHERIN!" to the whole congregation and Steve felt his shoulders sag with relief. He could stay, he would be staying, and he had a house. Not a house that many of his friends were in, admittedly, but Natasha was there and so was Loki (although that was maybe a little less reassuring). He took the hat off and wobbled over to the Slytherin table, where Natasha cleared him a seat with a death glare at Loki and smirked down at him.

"Well, well. First little Slytherin."

"'M not little," Steve retorted automatically, aware how painfully untrue it was. His spine was starting to ache, and the lack of support on the benches would only make it worse. He sighed, preparing himself mentally for yet another pill he would have to take that evening, and settled down for the headmistress' speech. Running through the rules for the new first years, they were informed that spellcasting in corridors was banned, as were several interestingly-named items he could already see Clint and Bucky plotting to use. Then Professor McGonagall clapped her hands, and the empty gold plates in front of them suddenly filled with food.

Steve took a little bit of everything he could actually eat - intolerances and such prohibited him from several things, which was disappointing but nothing he wasn't used to - and dug in, laughing as, two tables across from him, Bucky snorted juice out of his nose at something Sam had said. That made his stomach sink a little; he wished he had more of his friends in his house, or at least just Bucky. He was dreading having to go to bed tonight, in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people. If Bucky were to be there, it might not be so bad. He wondered if the hat had considered putting him in Hufflepuff.

"Can you ever change houses?" he asked Natasha, suddenly not feeling so hungry. The girl on his right, a brunette with warm brown eyes and a soft smile, answered. She looked across at Bucky, Sam and Clint, laughing together at the Hufflepuff table, and sighed gently.

"I don't think so. I've personally never had to, and I've not heard of anyone who wanted to. But maybe you could ask the hat, or talk to McGonagall, she knows everything. But it's not so bad in Slytherin, honestly, and even if you think it is, you don't have to spend all your time with us anyway. Nobody's going stop you from seeing your friends in other houses. It's allowed." She patted his shoulder gently. "I'm Peggy, by the way."

He nodded. "Steve," he mumbled, prodding at his sausages dully, and took a gulp of juice to distract himself. Beside him, Natasha sighed and gave Peggy a look; both of them left him to it, though, and he spent the rest of the feast staring longingly across at the Hufflepuff table until Bucky caught his eye and he quickly looked away.  


* * *

 

Lessons began the morning after, with the first subject scheduled on Steve's timetable being Potions. Thankfully the classroom was down in the dungeons, so after skipping out on breakfast - it only made him miserable after all, and he'd prefer to simply get a glass of water to take all of his medication with in the private of his dormitory without having the whole house staring at him for the enormous pill box he carted everywhere. He popped his vitamins, iron tablets, and heart medications in one hand and took an enormous swallow of water to force them down, coughing weakly as he choked on the last little bit. He sat for several minutes staring at all of his assorted pill bottles in defeat before shutting his trunk and climbing off the bed to make his way to his lessons.

Bucky fell into step beside him the moment he left the common room, heading further down into the dungeons towards the potions classroom.

"Missed you at breakfast," he said quietly, and Steve sighed.

"I wasn't hungry this morning," he lied, staring straight ahead to avoid meeting Bucky's gaze.

"That like you weren't hungry last night?" Bucky asked, and Steve closed his eyes for a moment, cursing Bucky and his intuition for a moment before turning to him.

"I'm fine, Bucky."

"No you ain't, but whatever. We've got class now anyway, and you better sit next to me or I'll be real upset. I smell or somethin'?"

Steve gave him a small grin. "Like a Hippogriff, _Bucky_."

"You little punk!" Bucky protested, laughing, and he slung an arm around Steve's shoulders as they took their seats at the back of the class.


	2. The First One Slytherin Has Let In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there are going to be a lot of cameos from different Marvel characters as professors, students, what have you. Case in point: Ms. Marvel teaches flying. (Clint has a crush.)

Potions class was full of chattering first years. At the front of the class, Bruce had all of his equipment set out neatly on the desk and was flicking through his textbook, frowning at the ingredients for the Forgetfulness Potion. Beside him, Tony was - as ever - popping gum and making obnoxious comments, demanding to know exactly how a computer worked and how the hell Muggles came up with something like that without magic. Bruce was just telling him about Ada Lovelace - "A witch!" Tony protested, "She was a witch!" - when the door to the classroom opened and in walked a small, bespectacled wizard in elbow-patched robes and loafers.

Steve sat up, nudging Bucky (who had been engaged in trading chocolate frog cards with Peter Quill on the bench next to theirs and explaining who the people on the cards were to the Muggleborn Peter Parker next to him) and nodding at the teacher waiting to start the class. Bucky shoved Cliodna and Melvin the Miserable into his robes and promised to continue the discussion with Quill after the class. Quill grinned and nodded, and went back to poking Peter Parker, who was studying (with great interest) a diagram of an Acromantula in his tattered copy of _Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them_.

"Good morning," the teacher greeted them, smiling, "my name is Abraham Erskine. I will be your Potions master for the foreseeable future of your years at Hogwarts. Now, can anyone tell me what the ingredients are for the boil cure potion? Any of them?"

Bucky's hand flew up, as did Bruce's and Tony's, and Professor Erskine smiled at them all, pleased. "I see you've all been reading your textbooks in preparation. Excellent. At the back there...?"

"James," Bucky told him, and took a sly peek in the textbook to check. "Um, dried nettles? And snake fangs. At least, I think."

"Very good," Professor Erskine nodded, "two points to Hufflepuff." He looked down at Tony and Bruce on the front row. "You two gentlemen? Can either of you remember the last two?"

"Porcupine quills and horned slugs," Bruce replied, pushing his glasses up his nose, "in a 1:2 ratio respectively."

"Well done, Mr Banner," Professor Erskine smiled, and awarded Ravenclaw five points in Bruce's honour. He then turned to the board and began to write the instructions, chalk scratching over the surface and echoing around the dingy classroom. Once they had all copied the information down, he let them up two at a time to get any residual ingredients not included in their potions kits and then set to walking around the classroom to supervise their potionmaking.

Steve kept his textbook open as he carefully ground his snake fangs in the mortar. Bucky beside him was happily pouring gravel-textured chunks of fangs to his cauldron, and Steve cast a critical eye over it, biting his lip.  
"Bucky, that's not really a fine powder... Look, the instructions say -"

"It'll be fine," Bucky waved him off, laughing, and turned up the heat beneath his cauldron. Steve decided to leave him to it, and continued to methodically grind his own fangs down until they resembled the icing sugar his mother used in cakes at home. He poured the fangs into his cauldron and carefully adjusted the temperature, before glancing at Peter Parker's cauldron, which was fuming angrily with bright green smoke. Professor Erskine came over to their bench and carefully inspected the cauldron, gently running Peter through how he could rectify the situation when adding the dried nettles in the next step.

Bruce at the front was, like Steve, taking his time; a marked contrast to Wade Wilson on the other side of his bench, who seemed to have thrown all of his ingredients into the cauldron at once and was now stirring like a madman. Bucky glanced over and grinned, nudging Steve: "Just watch, there'll be fireworks in a minute-". Professor Erskine, in passing Bruce and Tony's bench, sat down beside Wade and vanished the contents of his cauldron before talking through the instructions for the potion again. Wade grudgingly obeyed and rebrewed his potion, adding one ingredient at a time (although he seemed to share Bucky's impatience with grinding the snake fangs, and left them at a 'small grit' stage before tossing them into the cauldron).

An explosion to Steve's right made him jump back away from his own cauldron; Bucky's had melted, hot globs of pewter dripping onto the surface of the desk, and his hands - drenched in the potion - were beginning to spring up in angry-looking boils as he grimaced in pain and tried to wipe them off on his robes. Steve jumped into action, scooping a flask of his own potion - misted with pink smoke, exactly as Professor Erskine said it should be - and poured it over Bucky's hands, making him flinch and hiss as the boils throbbed before disappearing. Professor Erskine fixed Steve with a kind but firm expression as he took Bucky's hands in his own, making sure that there were no lingering effects.

"You shouldn't ever give someone one of your potions before you're absolutely sure it's exactly how it's supposed to be," he told Steve as he let Bucky go. "But," he smiled, "it was well-brewed and did the job, and I expect our young Mr. Barnes here is very pleased to have the situation remedied. Well done, Steven."

Steve flushed and gave him a small smile, and Bucky threw his arm around Steve's shoulders, beaming. Professor Erskine let them go after that, with the stipulation that if the potion missed anywhere Bucky should take himself off to Madam Pomfrey in the hospital wing. Bucky nodded and steered Steve out of the classroom, pulling a crumpled timetable out of his pocket to check it and whooping excitedly when he saw they had flying lessons next, with a Professor Danvers, out on the school grounds near the Astronomy tower.

Professor Danvers, Steve heard Clint say to Sam with a low whistle, was _hot._ She looked fresh out of university ( _do wizards have universities?_ Steve wondered idly), and was wearing red robes patterned with gold stars as she hovered several feet above the grass on a broomstick, watching them approach. She was sat delicately, side-saddle like the old fashioned way women rode horses, but she soon swung her leg over and flew around them once before gracefully coming to a halt and climbing off the broom to line them up in two rows.

"I'm Professor Danvers, your flying instructor. Flying is a difficult art, based entirely on skill; it's not something you can learn to do from a book, and it can take a long time to learn to get to grips with each broom you fly on and to learn to keep your balance whilst being aware of everything around you. I've heard it compared to learning to drive," she told them, and then grinned, "although the student who told me so had passed his test by Confunding his examiner, so it's perhaps best not to take his advice to heart. Anyway: now that you've each got a broom, stretch out your right arm and say, 'Up!'. The broom should come to you, at which point you're to wait until everybody is ready before we take the next step."

They all did as directed, and Steve watched a little enviously as Sam and Clint's brooms leapt immediately into their hands. Bucky's did so after a moment of encouragement, like many others in the class. Tony, who had been bragging all week that he'd been flying since before he could walk, was still struggling, and looking more than a little irritated by it. Bruce had managed to get his broom to come up and was pushing his glasses up his nose as he tried to help Tony. The more he tried, however, the more frustrated Tony got until he snapped at Bruce to shut up and sulked instead.

Steve's broom was remaining firmly on the ground, where he much preferred it. He'd never been afraid of heights, but he was wary of how his impaired balance might affect his ability to fly, and he didn't much fancy slipping off the broom in front of the whole class. Bucky offered him an encouraging smile and tried to ask the broom to come up for him; Steve shook his head fiercely, setting his jaw determinedly, and Bucky laughed and shrugged.

"Up!" Steve told the broom, holding out his hand. It rolled over a little, but remained firmly on the ground. He was now the last one in the class to have his broom still on the ground, and he could hear a few of his fellow students - two Slytherins from his dorm, and a Gryffindor - laughing behind their hands. Professor Danvers quelled their amusement with a glower and came over to help.

"Brooms are like horses," she told him gently, "if you're scared, they know. They don't want to carry someone who's going to treat them badly out of nervousness. You need to be firm, like you know exactly what you're doing, and say, 'Up!'. It'll come to you. Keep trying for another few minutes, and I'll try and distract the others with a couple of questions."

He smiled gratefully at her and continued to try and coax his broom up. After what felt like an age, it finally floated grudgingly up to his hand, and Bucky whistled and grinned at him, knocking their shoulders gently. Steve rolled his eyes but grinned back, and Professor Danvers congratulated them all on managing to complete the first step before teaching them the proper way to seat themselves on the broom.

Bucky had the hang of it in no time, as did Sam and Clint. The three of them were hovering, perfectly at ease, moments later; Sam was whispering to Clint about the upcoming Harpies vs. Chudley Cannons Quidditch game in a few weeks and Bucky was visibly itching to get moving, having to steady himself on the broom when it responded to him and started to back out of the line slowly. Steve had managed a weak hover that left his toes barely an inch off the ground, but it was more success than Tony was having. Tony had graduated from sulking and pouting at his broom to insulting it, in the hopes of aggravating it enough to force it to prove that it wasn't "a useless lump of sticks and rope." Bruce warned him about the temperamental nature of brooms approximately two seconds before Tony's broom bucked between his legs and tossed him backwards before dropping innocently to the floor, still as stone.

Professor Danvers raised her eyebrow. "I don't know what you were expecting to achieve, Mr. Stark, but nobody likes to be treated like that, brooms especially."

"Jarvis could probably get me off the ground more easily than that thing," Tony muttered under his breath, "and he can't even fly."

"Be that as it may, I think you ought to apologise before trying again. Please."

Tony apologised with a muttered 'sorry' and the broom gave an angry twitch before floating up his hand again, allowing him to climb on. Once Tony was settled and hovering, the whole class were in the air, even Steve at the end. Professor Danvers taught them how to direct the broom - like riding a horse, a combination of steering with the hands and guiding the broom with the thighs and shifting of body weight - and soon first-years were taking their first wobbly trips around the quad. Steve was the second after Tony to suffer an involuntary dismount; the broom suddenly dropped out of the air as he was trying to guide it around a bench, and he banged his knee painfully on the stone seat. Professor Danvers tried to check in and see if he was okay, and Bucky pulled up next to him to give him a hand, but Steve just gripped the broom determinedly and climbed back on, refusing to let it get the better of him.

His second flight went better. He managed a trip all the way around the quad, his heart pounding in his chest as the broom sped around the course; the air rushing past made it difficult to catch his breath, and it was making him dizzy. But he was so proud to be in the air and flying that he didn't care. He gripped the broom tightly, teeth gritted - completely focused on not falling off - but he managed to overtake Bucky at one point around the course when his friend was idling to talk to Sam, and he shot a grin over his shoulder as Bucky laughed and cheered.

Professor Danvers was smiling as the lesson ended and they all touched down, and she took Steve aside to talk to him properly.

"See? I told you it'd come to you. Perseverance is all you need."

"My ma says I've got plenty of that, Professor. 'Bullheaded' is the word she uses."

Professor Danvers laughed. Steve and Bucky hung back at the end of the lesson to collect all of the brooms and help her tidy them away to the flight sheds before catching the rest of their friends up to head to lunch in the great hall.  


* * *

  
After lunch, their afternoon was spent first in Herbology with Professor Longbottom and then in Care of Magical Creatures with Hagrid. The greenhouses for Herbology were sweltering; sunlight poured through the roof and made the place feel like an oven. By the time they left, stinking of dragon dung fertiliser and with their robes sticking to them with the sweat, Steve was feeling lightheaded and woozy. He stumbled on the path on the way to Hagrid's animal enclosure, making Bucky stop beside him worriedly and ask if he was alright. He nodded, a mumbled "'M fine," and they continued, albeit with Bucky glancing sideways at him every so often to make sure he wasn't about to faint.

It was much cooler out on the grounds, and Steve felt better fairly soon. There was a large bonfire crackling in the corner of the enclosure, amongst which Steve could see tiny creatures crawling around. One of them looked at him with brilliant red eyes, and he leaned closer curiously, tugging on Bucky's sleeve and pointing, before being distracted by Hagrid, who had walked out of his hut wearing an immense pair of dragonhide gloves and was beaming at them all.

"Salamanders!" He exclaimed happily, beaming. "Who can tell me abou' 'em?"

"They live in fires?" Clint volunteered, peering in between two crackling logs at the small lizard curled up at the bottom of the fire. Its tongue flickered out in a whistling hiss before it darted away, and Hagrid nodded at him.

"Tha's righ'. Here, c'mon, budge up so's everyone can get a look."

He reached into the fire with one hand and plucked a salamander from its hiding place, holding it out on his palm. It was white, with eyes that burned red, and it shivered in the cool air. Hagrid reached into one of his pockets for a small spice bottle, and sprinkled some pepper onto his finger which he fed to it, making it sneeze before lashing its tail happily. He beamed at the class.

"Everyone got a pair o' gloves with yeh?"

"Yes," they all chorused.

"Grand. So I'll get yeh a salamander between - maybe two of yeh, and then yeh can help me look after 'em fer this lesson."

He lined them all up in their pairs once they had their gloves on and carefully dug into the fire to get each pair a salamander. Bucky took theirs in his cupped hands, staring at it in awe as Steve flipped through _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ for information on their care and characteristics. He was just reading about the treatment of scale rot with chilli powder and relating the information to Bucky when Bucky grinned and whispered, "Hey, hot stuff," to the salamander and Steve burst out laughing.

"It's a lizard, Barnes," he giggled, "you're s'posed to be looking after it, not flirting with it!"

"But it's so cute." Bucky held it up to show him.

"Stop flirting with the lizard, Bucky."

"Don't listen to him," Bucky told the salamander, "he's just jealous. I'm going to train you up and make you the next hot talent to come out of Hogwarts."

"You could teach it to sing. _Goodness gracious, great balls of fire_ -"

"Yes!" Bucky grinned, laughing. Steve sprinkled a small amount of pepper onto his finger and fed it to their salamander, which coughed before nosing at the sleeve of Bucky's robes curiously and making the fabric sizzle. Bucky yelped and slapped at his robes, extinguishing the smoulder. The salamander climbed over onto Steve's hand and wrapped its tail around his wrist over the glove, its red eyes watching him curiously. Steve stroked a finger over its head and it grasped his fingertip in tiny webbed hands and tried to gnaw on the end of his finger, eyes narrowed.

"Call it Mr. _Burns_ ," he suggested, nodding at the small hole in Bucky's robes, "we could build him a tiny power plant!"

"Huh?"

"Oh. Never mind that one."

Bucky shrugged and nodded, taking the little bottle of chilli powder from Steve and sprinkling some over the salamander's back. He rubbed it in gently and the creature made a happy throbbing sort of purring noise, tail lashing, and spread-eagled its little legs relaxedly in his hand. Steve snorted and tickled the lizard under its chin as it lounged happily in Bucky's palm.

The lesson finished with the salamanders being carefully deposited back into the fire and Hagrid thankfully not adding to the homework they had been set from Potions and Herbology, a foot of parchment each on the uses of dragon's blood and the behaviours of the mimbulus mimbletonia. Bucky sighed in relief and stuffed his books back into his bag, straightening his hat which had fallen crookedly over one ear and set off back to the castle with Clint and Sam. It took a few moments of eager conversation before he realised that Steve hadn't joined them as he had assumed he would; looking around the small knots of students returning from their lessons, Steve was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's Rogers?" he asked Clint, frowning.

"Dunno."

"He wasn't with us when we left Care of Magical Creatures?" Sam asked, looking around them in surprise.

"No," Bucky said slowly, casting a glance back at Hagrid's enclosure. There was no sign of Steve there, either. It was as though he'd just disappeared into thin air. (And they hadn't learned Vanishing charms or Apparition yet, so he couldn't have done either of those - not that, as Bruce kept reminding them, you actually could apparate inside Hogwarts grounds.) Bucky hesitated for a moment before Clint shrugged.

"We'll see him at dinner anyway."

"If he turns up," Bucky reminded him."He barely touched anything yesterday and he skipped breakfast." He sighed. "I'm gonna go look for him - I'll catch you up in the common room for study period."

Sam and Clint nodded and headed towards the dormitories, seamlessly picking up the thread of their Quidditch argument they'd been having since Potions that morning. Bucky smiled at his friends' ability to drop everything in favour of Quidditch and walked back down the path to the Care of Magical Creatures enclosure, keeping an eye out for Steve along the way. Hagrid was outside, merrily humming to himself as he stoked the salamanders' fire and banked it with more wood, so Bucky crossed over to ask him if he'd seen where Steve went, but Hagrid only scratched his head and said "Haven' seen him since the end o' the lesson," before offering to give Bucky a hand looking.

"It's okay," Bucky mumbled, "it's prob'ly nothing."

"Well, yeh don' find him an' you come runnin' back here, hear me? I'll come help yeh look." Hagrid smiled down at him behind the immense beard and Bucky nodded, reassured.

"Thanks."  


* * *

 

Steve didn't know any defensive spells yet, which turned out to be a problem approximately two minutes after the end of the Care of Magical Creatures lesson when he was walking around the great lake by himself and was accosted by three sixth-year Gryffindors, one of them a prefect. He wasn't doing anything he shouldn't have been - there was no reason for their interest in him, other than presenting an easy target because of his size - but there they were, with a leg-locker curse and nowhere for him to go but down on the floor with a crash that knocked the breath from his lungs.

The tallest of them was two or three times his size, heavyset with dull, square features like a troll. He was standing over Steve playing with his wand idly as he smirked down at him, looking him up and down derisively. Steve was forcibly reminded of one of the bullies who had always shoved his head down the toilets at primary school, only twice as tall and twice again as stupid. Unfortunately there weren't any toilets nearby for him to mysteriously explode, so his usual method of escape was out. Instead all he could do was lie on the floor, struggling to push himself up with his arms.

"What house are you in?" one of them asked him, pulling the Slytherin scarf from around his neck and holding it out mockingly. "Slytherin? They don't let mudbloods in there, don't you know that?"

"I'm not-"

"A mudblood? Yes you are," the largest one, the prefect, laughed. "Everyone knows you, Rogers. You're the first mudblood Slytherin let in," he grinned viciously, "you're _famous_."

"Wasn't big or stupid enough to be a Gryffindor," Steve spat back, nodding at their robes, and the prefect laughed before kicking him, hard, in the chest, making him grunt in pain. He grit his teeth, ignoring the smarting in his chest as he pushed himself up on his hands and wobbled up to stand, using a nearby tree as a crutch. Effectively backed into a corner as he was, he nevertheless put up his fists and glowered at them, ready to take whatever they hit him with. He was already more than used to it. It had never even occured to him anyway to use his wand; what good would it do when he didn't know any real spells to use?

 The sixth-years acted as though they'd never seen anything so hilarious; one hexed him with something that knocked him down again and made his face burn, swelling up until his eyes were slits and he could barely see.

"There's no need for you to be in Gryffindor," one of them said, "when you can't even stand up for yourself. You haven't even disarmed us - you don't know any magic at all, do you? Are you a squib, or just a filthy Muggle?"

Steve couldn't answer. His face was so swollen that his lips couldn't move properly, so his retort of 'Real brave for a Gryffindor - attacking first years,' when he heard a loud voice shout _Oculo inflammo!_ over his head before the sixth-years yelled in pain and complained of being blind. _Colloshoo!_ was cast a moment later by the same person, before they knelt down beside Steve to push his hair out of his eyes and tip his face one way and then the other to check on him. When the person spoke again, he realised that the voice belonged to the Slytherin prefect he'd met at dinner, Peggy, and she was fuming.

"Thirty points from Gryffindor! You should be ashamed of yourselves - no, Hodge, I'm not scared of you and I never have been, nor will I be - attacking a first year in the grounds like this! What do you think you're playing at?"

Steve shook his head, struggling away to stand up. "'M dine," he mumbled, "dun deed ady helb."

She muttered something under her breath and his legs sprang apart, the pressure around his face easing immediately and allowing him to open his eyes and look around him. Peggy was stood by his side, wand still pointed threateningly at the sixth-years, who all had bright red, inflamed eyes and were stuck fast to the ground. One of them opened his mouth to speak and Peggy trained her wand on him immediately, eyes narrowed.

"I'm not interested, Hodge, in whatever you have to say. Steve didn't cast those curses on himself and I know damn well that you're the kind of coward who only fights people he has an advantage over. So you're going to stay here whilst I take Steve to the hospital wing, and then I'm going to fetch Professor McGonagall and she can do with you as she sees fit."

Steve turned around without another word and started making his way across the lawn to the castle. Peggy chased after him, grasping his shoulder and spinning him around.

"Where are you going? I need to take you to Madam Pomfrey to make sure you're not hurt -"

"Take it from me," he told her, "I'm not hurt. And I don't think you should have cursed them. It'll only get you into trouble for duelling too."

"People like Hodge only listen if you back up threats with actions -"

"And I thought prefects would be above using hexes to punish people," Steve retorted, narrowing his eyes at her. He was simmering with anger, fists clenched. If Peggy used hexes like that - out of nowhere, just because she saw someone doing something wrong - she was no better than those Gryffindors. Even if she was doing it to protect him (which was admittedly another sore point, because as far as he was concerned, he didn't need anyone rushing in to be his white knight in shining armour). He straightened his crumpled uniform and rubbed at the lump on the back of his head from where his head had hit the ground.

Peggy stared at him, flummoxed, before recovering and raising her eyebrows. "Well, you're right, but -"

"But I have to be getting to dinner," Steve told her, and marched off towards the great hall, ignoring the twinges of pain in his chest where they had kicked him.

Natasha was trading glares with Loki when Steve stumbled into the great hall. He was pale and shaking, gasping for breath and struggling to stay upright. After a fall at the edge of the lake where a hot flash of agony in his chest so strong that it almost made him black out, he'd barely been able to drag himself up and into the school. As it was, his chest was so tight he could hardly breathe, and his vision was starting to swim and turn black in the corners from pain. He staggered over to the Slytherin table and dropped down onto the bench beside Natasha, making Loki stop mid-tirade and fix him with a critical eye.

"What on earth happened to you?"

"Nothing," Steve forced out stubbornly, reaching for a plate of potatoes, "I'm f-fine."

"Bullshit," Natasha rounded on him angrily. "Someone's done something to you, Steve, you're sweating bullets and you can barely sit up straight -"

"I have scoliosis," he snapped back, "I can never sit up straight."

"My brother said your friends have been looking for you," Loki told him, still staring unflinchingly at Steve's face, "and he's been called out from dinner to deal with three sixth-years who got hit with a nasty conjunctivitis curse. You wouldn't happen to possibly know anything about that, would you?"

Steve glanced down the table at Peggy's empty place before looking back to Loki. "No."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't mess with Peggy Carter. She'll fuck your shit up.
> 
> Also, the puns only get worse from here on out. Y'all have been warned.
> 
> Using my rudimentary still-learning Latin skills to make up the words for pre-existing spells like a boss!


	3. Stupid Gryffindors and Stubborn Slytherins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is long. Sorry.

He avoided Bucky again at breakfast, deliberately hiding behind his Transfiguration textbook which he propped against the jug of pumpkin juice in front of his place at the table. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, painfully aware that Bucky was probably watching him from the Hufflepuff table as usual; he was itching to glance over the top of the pages to check, but forced himself to continue tucking into his porridge instead as he stared blindly at the diagrams explaining the basic principles of magic. Nevertheless, Natasha trying to make eye contact with him from her seat beside Peggy did not escape his attention; he just ignored her the same way he was ignoring the twinge in his ribs - possibly cracked, definitely at least bruised - and flipped the page, pretending to be absorbed in the transfiguration of small cretaceous creatures into clothespins. The Slytherin table was never particularly sociable in the mornings anyway; quiet (but not studiously so, like the Ravenclaws) and brooding.

The first class of the day was History of Magic. Steve waited until every last student had left from the hall - including a lingering Peggy, who stood over him like a guard dog for several moments, eyes scanning the passing people for his 'friends' from the night before - before shoving the book into his bag and heading out of the hall. His chest was already tight again by the time he had reached the enormous oak doors, and he was so short of breath from the shooting pains lancing down his side from his ribs that he had to stop in the door jamb to try and catch it again. The corridors were empty but for a couple of untidy, harried-looking Gryffindors rushing across the quad towards the Herbology greenhouses. Steve nevertheless kept his hand nonchalantly shoved in his pocket as he walked, fist balled around his wand - just waiting for another encounter like the previous evening's.

Professor Binns, as usual completely oblivious, didn't even notice when he slipped through the door in search of his seat. Bucky was waiting faithfully at their desk, eyes fixed on Steve's pale, pained face as he slunk through the rows to settle beside him and pull out his parchment and quills.

"Missed you at breakfast again," he murmured, hand resting lightly on Steve's shoulder. Steve gave him a tight smile and shrugged, wincing as the movement jostled his ribs. His breathing was getting worse again, hoarse rattling noises punctuating every inhale and an insidious squeezing tightness constricting his lungs until he was lightheaded from lack of air. The whole class could probably hear the unhealthy wheezing noises of every breath he took. Bucky beside him was beginning to panic as Professor Binns droned on and on, floating around at the front of the class and gesturing sluggishly to the diagrams of the Goblin Rebellion on the board at the front of the class.

"Sorry, Professor," Bucky suddenly interrupted, hand in the air, "but Steve's sick, I'm gonna have to take him to the hospital wing."

"Ah - yes, Bartleby - of course -"

"I'm fine, Professor," Steve gritted out, glowering at Bucky, "I don't need to go anywhere. I'm sorry for interrupting." He shoved Bucky's hand off his shoulder and gasped as he felt a burst of pain accompany the distinct sensation of something giving way in his ribcage. Sweat broke out over his forehead as he forced himself to stay in his seat, head swimming, the words on the board beginning to blur as his vision dulled in the edges. Bucky was whispering something urgently in his ear, but even with his hearing aids in, he couldn't catch it; he was gasping for breath, weak with panic.

Sam on the row behind leapt into action, wand out of his pocket and casting _Anapneo!_ before Bucky had chance to open his mouth. Steve tumbled out of his seat, tears running down his cheeks as he gasped on the floor; his airway was clearing again, aided by Sam's charm, but his chest was on fire and there was a deep, persistent ache in his side that the heaving of his chest wasn't helping. Bucky was knelt by his side, grey eyes round with fright, and his hands were fluttering worriedly over Steve's chest.  
"Steve -"

He struggled upright, shoving Bucky away a second time. "I'm fine," he insisted breathlessly, eyes narrowed, "I don't need your help."

"You're sick - you almost stopped breathing in the middle of class -"

Steve glanced around at the rest of the students staring at them and felt his face flush angrily. He hated to be the centre of attention, any attention, and he'd never responded well to people fussing over him when he was incapacitated. Even his mother knew that it was best to leave him to it when he was recovering from something, and would simply watch him out of the corner of her eye to make sure he wasn't overexerting himself whenever he was ill (which was often). Bucky's mother-henning was only making him angrier.

"I said I'm fine!" he snapped, grabbing his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Professor, I have to - I need to go -"

"Yes, Ridgeley, off you go."

"Thank you, Professor," he said, as politely as he could manage through gritted teeth, and stormed out of the lesson, fuming. He would be missing the final ten minutes of History of Magic, which was humiliating enough on its own; but he couldn't stand to sit there for the rest of the lesson being stared at and worried over, even by Bucky. He stomped down the stairs to the girls' bathrooms and locked himself in a cubicle, ignoring the sounds of Myrtle - another ghost, he'd learned, and one that had a tendency to ignore every visitor to her bathrooms in favour of her own sulking - wailing in the stall next to his. He sat there on the toilet, stewing, for a good long while before swallowing his pride and making his way to the hospital wing when his ribs gave another painful twinge.

Madam Pomfrey had apparently been waiting for him. The moment she saw him, she'd forced him to lie down on a bed and had given him a glass of pumpkin juice before fixing his ribs with a wave of her wand. It made his whole side feel suddenly very hot and then, just as suddenly, very cold; he touched his injured ribs gingerly with his fingertips and was relieved at the lack of pain. Once he could breathe properly again, she insisted on sitting on the chair beside his bed and fixed him with a stern but sympathetic gaze.

"Another run-in with those Gryffindors?"

"I didn't -" Steve immediately began, but she silenced him with one raised eyebrow.

"Miss Carter and Mr Odinson came right to me with the three of them. I fixed them up soon enough and sent them on to Professor McGonagall, but Miss Carter insisted I keep an eye out for you in case you 'got over your pride' and came for help." Madam Pomfrey cocked her head slightly, her expression turning concerned. "If you're having trouble with other students -"

"Thank you for fixing my ribs," Steve said abruptly, swinging his legs down off the bed, "but I've got to go to Charms now and I've already missed History of Magic. I'd rather not fall behind."

"I'm always here," Madam Pomfrey continued, reaching out to grasp his arm, holding him back, "and I'm not only for the mending of physical aches and pains. You can't always come to your fellow students, I know, and I don't want anything happening to you, young man."

"Thank you again," Steve muttered, and pulled his arm away as he left.  
  


* * *

  
Bucky shot him a sullen, hurt glance as he walked into the Charms classroom, silently shuffling his books further over onto his own side of the desk as Steve took his seat. He didn't speak for a good ten minutes, very much out of character for himself, before blurting out, "I was only trying to help -"

"I told you, I don't need help," Steve shot back, eyes focused on the board as he wrote down the incantations for the Locomotor charm. Irritation was threatening to rise in him again, but he forced it down, knowing that Bucky had meant well. He was the epitome of a Hufflepuff after all - kind, caring, loyal to a fault; wanting only to make his friends feel safe and to help whenever there was a problem. It wouldn't have been in his nature to let Steve deal with it on his own. "But thanks," he added quietly, and knocked his shoulder gently against Bucky's.

Bucky glanced at him with a small smile curving his lips."I just... I heard about those Gryffindors from Peter, you know, Parker. Apparently Thor came storming into the common room last night and let rip about how if he ever heard about any Gryffindor treating you - he mentioned you specifically, even though he was probably tryin'a make it sound like it was about everyone in general - like that, he'd hex them into next week, or worse, sic Loki on 'em. 'Parently the whole room went quiet as a grave. He was panting at 'em like a lion, he said, and even Nearly Headless Nick was quiverin' in the corner."

"You should've seen Peggy," Steve mumbled, unable to help himself, "she hit 'em with a Conjunctivitis curse that made their eyes so red they couldn't see, and she was threatening to hex them again when I left for dinner."

"Least you've got someone lookin' out for ya, then," Bucky smiled. "'Cept for us, of course. Me, Clint and Sam, we'll look after you too."

"I don't need looking after," Steve bristled, rolling his eyes, but he grinned back anyway. Sam, a seat ahead of them, turned around and shot him a grin and a thumbs up; Clint at his side whispered a quick spell under his breath and sent a note fluttering towards them on paper wings which was snatched out of the air by Bucky and opened to read, _Don't be such a mother hen, Barnes_ , with a wobbly drawing of a chicken beneath it. Steve snickered quietly and Clint winked before turning back to the board at Professor Flitwick's admonishment, the tiny wizard frowning at them from atop his tottering pile of books.

"Mr Barnes, Mr Rogers. The pair of you seem well-prepared to be showing the rest of the class how to perform the Locomotor charm..."

Bucky grinned sheepishly and waved his wand grandly with a dramatic, " _Locomotor!_ " directed at his pencil case. It didn't budge from the desktop.

Steve flicked a glance at the board before muttering the spell and making a quick jabbing movement with his wand, that made Bucky's pencil case suddenly zoom along the row of desks and fall off the end onto the floor, spilling quills all over the floorboards and smashing a bottle of ink. Professor Flitwick returned the quills to their case with a wave of his wand and sent the pencil case floating back across the classroom to the pair of them, but reminded them both to pay attention in future as they shot one another shy, embarrassed smiles.

"As we've seen, class, the Locomotor charm requires a more delicate touch..."

Soon the classroom was filled with moving objects, including at one point and on the receiving end of a more powerful casting from Wade Wilson, Professor Flitwick himself. Bucky succeeded upon his second try at making Tony's sunglasses rocket off the desk and across the room to Peter Parker's bench on the far side; Steve sent his Potions textbook on a tour of the whole room before Peter Quill returned it, a little too enthusiastically, from the back bench. (Steve was still mopping at his bloodied nose twenty minutes later, whilst Bucky tried to Vanish the stains from its cover.)

Locomotor Charms were followed by levitation; Bucky almost took Bruce's eye out with the tip of his wand in his wild arm-waving before the other boy lowered his arm and picked up his own wand to demonstrate. Bruce's feather floated almost all the way up to the ceiling before he lost concentration and it fell again; Wade Wilson in front of them had managed to set his on fire, and Bruce was too busy casting the extinguishing _Aguamenti_ spell to catch it again.

By the end of the lesson, Steve had at least got a grasp of both spells if not mastered them, and he was making his pencil case race Bucky's across their bench when the class finished and the other students began to pack up their things. His pencil case had just managed to beat Bucky's to the finish line (Tony's Transfiguration textbook) when Sam stood up and pointed out of the window.

"Hey, Steve - looks like Thor's waiting for you, man."

Steve groaned and collected his pencil case, shoving it into his bag with a roll of his eyes. He could already anticipate exactly how this conversation was going to go: Thor would be intensely (and loudly) apologetic over his house members' behaviour, tell Steve about the detentions and further dockings of points they had received, and then beam proudly at him as though waiting for congratulations. Bucky packed up his own things quickly and accompanied him out of the classroom, stopping beside Thor with a wide, happy smile.

"Hey!"

"Steven," Thor said, concern dripping from every inch of his face, "I was so sorry to hear of the behaviour of my fellow Gryffindors yesterday evening - and a prefect as well! Inexcusable! - I have spoken to Professor McGonagall, and -"

"Thor," Steve said, as patiently as he could manage, and laid a hand on Thor's burly arm to stop him, "it's okay. Don't worry about it. I'm... I can handle myself, I appreciate the thought but I don't need an apology from you -"

"But they were of my own house, and I as a prefect should have stopped them -"

"You weren't there, Thor, you couldn't have stopped them. Anyhow, Peggy got there first."

"Ah yes," Thor beamed, "your knight in shining armour!"

Steve's body went cold and he gritted his teeth in a grimace. "I don't - I can handle myself."

"If I have offended you, I did not mean to -"

"Then shut your great blundering mouth, you fat oaf," came Loki's voice from behind them, and Thor spun around, "and come help me with my Transfiguration homework. I'm having particular difficulty with changing the substance of things - making them _harder_ \- you've always been better with the _duro_ charm than I, and I'm _really struggling_..."

Steve shot Loki a confused look. He had been bragging at breakfast only that morning that he had mastered the Hardening Charm and had finished his homework well ahead of the deadline; but at the reddening of Thor's cheeks and his hesitation between Steve and his brother, the penny dropped and his own cheeks turned scarlet. Beside him Bucky was giggling into his hand and Sam was looking thunderstruck; Thor mumbled a hasty apology (still several decibels above any comfortable auditory level) and stumbled after his brother, berating him in a flurry of embarrassed Norwegian as Loki cackled and tugged on Thor's sleeve to hurry him along.  
  


* * *

  
Of course the peace didn't - couldn't - last. It was barely three days before Steve was being cornered again, out on the quadrangle after flying class, when he was already shivering and sweaty from the exertion. Three seventh-year Gryffindors stepped out of the cloisters to hex him with something that made the inside of his mouth burn as though he had eaten fire chillies, and another glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth so even his gasps came out gargled and muffled. He dropped his wand as he doubled over, and one of them - a burly, thickset blond with arms like tree trunks, clearly related to Hodge - darted forward to pick it up, laughing as he fumbled helplessly to get it back.

Steve ran through all the spells he could remember in his head, trying to think how to solve the problem - but he couldn't speak, and even if he could have, he was wandless; how on earth was he supposed to cast anything? - before Bucky came charging around the corner, wand already drawn and yelling _Expelliarmus!_ loud enough to summon Filch from the top floor of the Astronomy tower as he disarmed them.

"How sweet, Rogers," the first one said, lazily summoning his wand back with one outstretched hand, "you've got a pet. A guard dog!"

Steve glowered at them, although the effect was ruined somewhat by the streaming of his eyes and the garbled 'e gluh fuh gluh duh!' of his 'He's not my guard dog!'. Bucky was ignoring them, muttering every counter-curse he could think of as he tried to reverse the hexes they'd put on Steve; the seventh-years simply cast the same tongue-tying curse on him, too, and left laughing, playing with Steve's wand between them and using it to fire sparks at one another like Muggle children on Bonfire Night.

Bucky gave Steve a sad, apologetic look, and made a series of hand gestures that Steve interpreted to mean he was going to look for Thor to get the counter-curse. Steve sighed and decided to wait, leaning miserably against the cloister wall, head resting damply against the soft lining of snow in the open window space. The longer he was left to stew over it, however, the angrier he grew - not just at the seventh-years who cursed the pair of them in the first place (although he was by now used to being a target), but at Bucky as well. Bucky, who had charged in thinking himself the hero and had been hexed as well for his trouble. Bucky who was convinced that Steve was some sort of charity case, always needing someone to protect him and look after him and sort out his many woes-

By the time Bucky came back, Thor in tow, Steve was seething, eyes narrowed and arms folded fiercely across his chest. Thor unglued his tongue in no time, and Steve immediately set to using it.

"You _idiot!_ " he yelled at Bucky, shoving him furiously, "What did you think you were doing? Did I ask you for help? Did I actually say to you, _Bucky, please come here waving your wand like a moron and pissing them off so you can get yourself cursed too, because that sounds like such a_ great _idea, doesn't it, God, what a_ brilliant _plan, well done, Bucky_ -"

"Steve," Thor began, but he fell silent when Steve glared at him and swung back to Bucky with his fists balled.

"Look at you, the big, brave Hufflepuff, running in to rescue the poor little bullied Slytherin from the mean Gryffindors. You should be a Gryffindor too - you're stupid enough, along with the muscle! Even you, Thor - when are all of you going to get this into your idiot heads? _I. DON'T. NEED. RESCUING!_ I can fight my own battles! I don't need you to do it for me - I don't need any of you, not you, not Sam, or Clint, or Peggy, or Thor, or anyone - just - just _leave me alone!_ "

"Steve -" Bucky whimpered, tears beginning to fill his eyes. He reached out towards him, and Steve lashed out, whacking his hand away with one fist.

"No! Leave me alone! I don't - I don't want you near me right now. I don't need your help. I don't want your help. What I want is for all of you to leave me alone and just - just _fuck off_!"

"That's _enough_ ," Thor rumbled angrily, grasping at Steve's sleeve. Bucky was squaring his shoulders bravely, chin lifted despite the wobbling of his lip and the pooling of tears in his eyes; he stared at Steve with such hurt that all of his anger seeped away and guilt flooded him in its place.

"Bucky, I'm sorry -"

"No," Bucky choked out, biting his lip, "I'm sorry. For inflicting myself on you like that -" and he turned on his heel and ran back inside the castle, where he could be heard breaking into sobs before he disappeared past the Great Hall.

Thor was still gripping Steve's arm tight, anger blazing in his eyes.

"That was unnecessary!"

"I know," Steve said miserably, and allowed himself to be led into the Great Hall and deposited firmly beside Peggy, who took one look at the guilt-stricken face in front of her and pulled him into a one-armed hug, allowing him to sniffle quietly into her shoulder as she stared at Bucky's empty place at the Hufflepuff table.  
  


* * *

  
Bucky skipped breakfast the next day. Steve spent the whole half-hour miserably watching the door for any signs of the familiar head of shaggy brown hair, but there was no sign of Bucky at all and even Sam and Clint were ignoring his efforts to communicate with them (he even sent Peggy's owl over with a short note, but Clint scrunched it up after reading it and went straight back to pointedly talking to Sam, which made Steve's spirits sink even lower). He even lingered past the Hufflepuff dormitory stairway on the way to Herbology, but Bucky didn't make his way down even when Steve deliberately made himself late waiting for him. He ended up trudging to the greenhouses in silent misery, biting his lip against swimming eyes the whole way there, and took his place at their usual table without saying a word.

Bucky, it turned out, had arrived to the lesson and had accepted his usual place at their table, but was standing stiff as a board and still radiating hurt. His hair was a mess, his tie and shirt collar even more crooked than usual, and his eyes were red-rimmed and wet behind the curtain of brown locks. Steve tried to speak to him, to offer an apology, anything, but the words died in his throat at the furious glare Bucky gave him, lip wobbling despite the clenched set of his jaw.

"Fuck off," he hissed, sounding far too grown up and angry for an eleven year old boy, and Steve acquiesced miserably, listlessly prodding with his trowel at the tray of soil he was supposed to be digging over ready to plant Bubotuber pods in the next lesson. Bucky equally did barely any work, but the whole hour was spent in an uncomfortable silence, to the point that their neighbours shot each other awkward glances and edged away, unwilling to let the sour mood permeate their own conversations.

Professor Longbottom kept them behind at the end to ask what was wrong, but the most either of them would volunteer on the subject was Bucky's curt "We fell out," before his excuses that he would be late to Transfiguration as he left the greenhouse.

Steve followed him out, watching him go with his chest aching, and Peggy - passing by on her prefect rounds (who was he kidding? She was probably following him, to make sure he didn't get into trouble again) - came and sat down on the edge of the bench beside him, brown eyes saddened.

"What's happened, then?"

"I... I said something I shouldn't have, when I was - having difficulty - and Bucky was only trying to help, and now he's mad at me because I told him I didn't want him there but I do, he's my - he's my best friend and I..." He hiccuped, tears threatening to spill, "I miss him, Peggy, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I tried to tell him, over and over, but he's mad so he's not listening to me, and -"

"Here," Peggy said gently, passing him a tissue from the inside pocket of her robes. Steve took it and hid his face as he sobbed for a moment before scrubbing at the tear tracks and blowing his runny nose. "I understand. I was at Hogwarts - my first year - during... well, during a lot of times of unrest, and people who I thought would be friends forever said things they didn't mean or that were said in anger. I remember a story one of the seventh-year Gryffindors at the time told me, two Gryffindor boys in particular who had such a falling-out that they didn't even want to stay in the same dormitory with each other. Seamus and Harry, they were called. Seamus said something he didn't think through because he was frightened and angry, and Harry lashed out defensively because he felt attacked, and... well. The whole house, they all suffered after that. But they were friends again eventually, when Seamus apologised and Harry had cooled down a little."

She fixed Steve with a sympathetic look. "Bucky is probably just feeling attacked, like Harry was. If you said it whilst you were frightened and angry, then it's not surprising that you didn't mean it quite like it came out, whatever it was. Just... say you're sorry, and if he's really your friend then he'll know that this is something you mean and you can both forgive each other."

"But it was all my fault -"

"Arguments are a two-way street, Steve," Peggy said wryly, "believe me." She patted Steve's shoulder. "Just tell him what you told me, and everything will be alright."

"Thanks, Peggy," Steve mumbled, and Peggy nodded as she ushered Steve away to head off for her next lesson.  
  


* * *

 

  
Steve didn't manage to get Bucky on his own again until after Transfiguration, when he pulled him into an empty classroom and shut the door behind them. Bucky tried to shove past him - "We've got Potions, and I'm not going to be late because of you -" - but Steve gently pushed him back, holding onto his hand tightly as he blurted out, "I'm sorry - Buck, I'm sorry."

"Why'd you say it then?" Bucky said roughly, before his voice hitched and he averted his eyes again. "Why'd you say that, Steve - why'd you... why'd you do that t'me?"

"I was... mad," Steve confessed, squeezing Bucky's hand gently (relieved he hadn't let go). "I... I don't really know how to go askin' people for help. I always dealt with bullies on my own, because -" He sighed. "I never had friends to help me deal with them. I got mad because I felt like... like you guys all saw me as too weak to sort out my own problems, because first Peggy, then Thor, then Sam an' you and -"

"That's stupid!" Bucky interjected, rubbing a hand over his face in exasperation. "Stevie - you idiot - of course we're your friends, we wanna help you out because you don't gotta deal with that on your own! If you've got people behind you, they won't see you like... like a target any more and they'll stop. That's all we're tryin'a do, all of us - Peggy, Thor, Sam, Clint an' me. We're all just tryin' to look out for you, because we don't want you to feel like you ain't got any friends who can help you out."

"I know," Steve mumbled, "I'm sorry."

"It ain't just me you gotta say sorry to," Bucky reminded him, but the sharp tone of his voice had softened considerably and he was squeezing Steve's hand gently. "You gotta say sorry to Peggy and Clint and Sam, too, and especially Thor."

"Yeah." Steve scrubbed a hand over his face with a sigh. "I'm sorry, Buck."

"Never mind, punk," Bucky said with a small grin, and slung his arm over Steve's shoulder affectionately.  
  


* * *

  
After dinner, Bucky and Steve went around the whole hall collecting each and every one of their group of friends - a standoffish Clint and Sam, Peggy, Angie, a grumpy Thor, Natasha, Loki, Bruce and Tony - and took them all to the Hufflepuff common room, where they collected all the overstuffed chintz armchairs beside the fire and piled into them, some with several people sat all to one chair. Thor had Loki on one arm of the chair and Tony perched on the other; Peggy and Angie were curled around each other on another, with Natasha leaning over the back. Steve took a deep breath and sighed heavily, fidgeting uncomfortably as he opened his mouth to speak.

"Guys, I... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... to yell and say I didn't need any of you. I'm just... not used to having friends, I guess. At least, not ones who actually want to help me with my problems."

"You're an idiot," Natasha said, but fondly; Loki snickered as he rested his head against the back of Thor's chair and nodded.

"A true fool. And you've met my brother, so that's saying something."

"Thor, I... I owe you an apology most of all. Thanks for, um, for not taking points or giving me detention when I was fighting and totally deserved it for calling you a stupid Gryffindor."

"You have met my brother," Thor answered, with a wry grin up at Loki, who smirked; "a 'stupid Gryffindor' is the very least of what he has called me before."

Steve gave him a small, shy smile, and Thor climbed abruptly out of his seat to pull him into a back-slapping hug that very nearly broke another one of his ribs. That seemed to be the universal symbol for 'crush Steve in a hug, everyone', and within seconds he was surrounded by all - or most, given that Loki wasn't particularly one for hugging and neither was Natasha - of his friends, arms around him, as the fire crackled at his back.

**Author's Note:**

> In defence of Steve being sorted into Slytherin: What's the defining trait of Slytherins? Ambition. For notes on Steve's ambition, consult [this](http://maryjabassa.tumblr.com/post/89970022662) Tumblr post which puts it all so very nicely.  
> (For Peggy, ditto. She's in Slytherin for the exact same reasons as Steve - she fought for what she wanted and got it, despite "every door being slammed in [her] face".
> 
> Bucky's nickname is _Bucky_ , for goodness' sake. The hippogriff jokes just write themselves.
> 
> For a full grocery list of the various medical ailments Steve suffers from in this, [here](http://minuiko.tumblr.com/post/89969369437/chronically-ill-steve-rogers). I've tried to write them as realistically as possible and not to use magic as a, well, magical cure-all for everything he suffers from, because that would be (in my opinion, and solely regarding my own work) lazy writing. (And I'm just too damn stubborn... more stubbornness than anything else, actually.)


End file.
